Senate Welfare Reform Plan Softer Than House's Version

WASHINGTON - — Senate Republicans unveiled a welfare reform plan on Tuesday that would soften or even scuttle some of the benefit cuts and work requirements approved by the House.

The Senate initiative, outlined by the Finance Committee, would transfer to the states control over the cash assistance program for poor families without imposing as many restrictions as the House plan.

The House bill would require states to make teen mothers and legal immigrants ineligible for cash benefits, to cap benefits so parents could not receive additional cash for having more children, and to penalize recipients if the paternity of children is not established. The Senate bill contains no such federal requirements, although it would allow states to impose their own restrictions.

As the Senate prepared to open debate on its welfare initiative, the Clinton administration issued its strongest warning yet that the president is prepared to protect the status of food stamps.

Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, testifying before the Senate Agriculture Committee on Tuesday, said Clinton will veto any legislation that dismantles the $27 billion food stamp program by turning it over to the states in the form of lump-sum grants.

The president already has said that he would veto the House version of welfare reform. White House officials have not said whether the Senate measure, as currently envisioned, would suffer a similar fate.

Some conservative Republicans, however, already have told Finance Chairman Bob Packwood, R-Ore., that they will oppose the measure unless he amends it to include four provisions that they believe would deter unwed pregnancy, including denying benefits to unwed teen mothers and rewarding states that reduce out-of-wedlock births.

The Senate proposal, like the House bill, would end the nation's 60-year guarantee of welfare benefits for poor single mothers with children. Both would provide lump-sum block grants to the states to tailor their own programs to provide cash benefits to poor households.